House Majority PAC

The House Majority PAC raised $38 million in the 2014 election cycle, third largest total of any super PAC. It supports Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, aiming to put them back in the majority.

The largest contributors to the PAC in 2014 were Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner of Newsweb Corp., who gave $3 million, and former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who gave nearly $2.3 million. (Bloomberg had been a lifelong Democrat before running for mayor as a Republican in 2001, then left the GOP in 2007 and listed himself as “unaffiliated.”) The third largest donor was billionaire mathematician and hedge-fund manager James H. Simons of Euclidean Capital LLC., who gave $2 million.

A number of labor unions also chipped in large sums. The Carpenters & Joiners Union gave nearly $1.4 million; the Laborers Union gave over $1.3 million and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers gave $1.1 million.

As of June 30, 2015, the House Majority PAC had raised a little more than $1.8 million. Nearly half of that came from two men: $500,000 from Donald Sussman, founder and chairman of Paloma Partners, a hedge fund based in Connecticut, and $400,000 from Jon Stryker, an architect and heir to a medical-products company, Stryker Corporation, which founded by his grandfather, Homer Stryker.

The group’s spending goes mainly to attack Republicans. In 2014 it spent more than $25 million opposing GOP candidates, and less than $4 million advocating for Democratic candidates. It spent between $1 million and $2 million each against its top 10 Republican targets, and 6 of them won anyway.